How National Monuments Protect Your Water – And Why Tech Leaders Should Care

Most people hear “national monument” and think of hiking trails and dinosaur bones, not tap water and data centers. Yet more than 13 million Americans drink water that depends directly on watersheds in or downstream of these protected lands. And roughly 83% of that water has no other protection besides the monument designation.

This matters because clean, predictable water isn’t just a conservation issue. It’s core infrastructure for green technology, from solar manufacturing to battery plants to AI-powered data centers that are spreading across the American West. When those monuments are threatened by mining, oil and gas, or grazing expansion, they’re not just abstract landscapes at risk — it’s your water security, your operational risk, and your long-term sustainability strategy.

In this post, I’ll lay out how national monuments quietly function as water-security assets, how current monument rollbacks could raise real risks, and where AI and geospatial tech fit into defending both ecosystems and business continuity.

National Monuments Are Invisible Water Infrastructure

National monuments aren’t usually created to protect water. They’re designated to safeguard cultural sites, landscapes, fossils, biodiversity, and tribal heritage. But the new analysis from the Center for American Progress shows they also behave like natural water-treatment plants and buffers.

Here’s the core insight:

Protecting land around rivers and streams is one of the most effective ways to keep drinking water clean and reliable.

According to the analysis:

• More than 21,000 miles of waterways run through the 31 monuments created since the Clinton administration — nearly twice the mileage in the National Wild and Scenic Rivers System.
• Watersheds in or downstream of these monuments directly supply drinking water for over 13 million people.
• 83% of that water doesn’t have another strong layer of protection. Remove or shrink the monument, and you strip away its primary safeguard.

From a green technology perspective, that’s infrastructure. Forests, healthy soils, wetlands, and intact landscapes slow runoff, filter contaminants, reduce sediment, and stabilize flows. You get:

• Lower treatment costs for utilities
• Less flood damage to critical assets
• More stable water supplies that industry and cities can plan around

The reality? For a lot of communities, national monuments are doing uncredited work as low-cost, low-carbon “water plants” that never send a bill.

How Monument Rollbacks Put Drinking Water at Risk

When an administration talks about shrinking or eliminating national monuments, it’s usually framed as an economic move: more land for oil, gas, coal, and mining, plus expanded grazing. The water story tends to get buried.

Here’s what changes when you downgrade a monument:

1. More contamination pathways

If monument protections are cut back, the land around streams and rivers opens up to:

• Oil and gas drilling
• Hardrock mining (including coal, uranium, nickel)
• More intensive grazing and road-building

Each of these activities increases the risk that chemicals, heavy metals, and excess sediment end up in waterways. Once they’re in the system, they travel downstream to reservoirs and intakes that feed towns, farms, and industry.

The CAP analysis underscores that simply protecting the “wet stuff” — the rivers themselves — isn’t enough. As Drew McConville put it, “The clean water depends on what comes into them from natural lands.” If you industrialize the slopes and valleys, you eventually industrialize the water.

2. Increased pressure on limited supplies

Extractive industries don’t just risk contamination; they’re also major water users:

• Mining and mineral processing can require large volumes of water for ore separation and dust control.
• Energy development often brings in camps, processing, and transport infrastructure that all consume water.

In arid regions already facing climate-driven shortages, that means tighter competition between:

• Households
• Agriculture
• Manufacturing and logistics
• Data centers and high-tech facilities

The CAP report found that 23 of the studied monuments sit in regions projected to face growing water shortages. Remove buffers there, and you’re effectively betting against climate science.

3. Higher risk for marginalized communities

The analysis also points out that historically marginalized communities are overrepresented within these watersheds compared to national averages. When protections drop:

• They’re more likely to face higher contamination risk.
• They have less power to fight polluting projects.
• They often have fewer resources to pay for advanced treatment or bottled water.

For companies with ESG goals, this isn’t a side detail. It’s central to whether your sustainability claims align with environmental justice outcomes.

Grand Staircase-Escalante: A Case Study in Hidden Water Value

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah is usually portrayed as dry, empty canyon country. That’s only half the story.

According to the analysis, the monument:

• Protects 2,517 miles of waterways
• Sits within both the Upper and Lower Colorado River Basins
• Includes key tributaries like the Paria and Escalante Rivers
• Lies just north of Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the United States

Nearly 90% of the watersheds inside the monument are projected to see declining water levels as the climate warms. Yet at the same time, a nine-billion-ton coal deposit sits under its central section, along with uranium and nickel.

Here’s the tension:

• On one side: short-term extraction revenues and jobs.
• On the other: long-term water security for millions across the Southwest who depend on the Colorado River system — plus the resilience of ecosystems and local economies shifting to outdoor recreation and renewable energy.

As Jackie Grant, who leads a nonprofit dedicated to the monument, points out, people rarely associate Grand Staircase-Escalante with water. But the snowmelt that starts in nearby high country and flows through its canyons is part of the same system that keeps faucets running and hydroelectric turbines spinning across several states.

From a green technology viewpoint, that’s a reminder: if your business relies on the Colorado River — directly or indirectly — you also rely on the health of upstream protected lands.

Where Green Technology and AI Fit Into Water Protection

So where does green technology come into this story beyond being an affected stakeholder? There are three big roles: monitoring, planning, and accountability.

1. AI and geospatial data for smarter protection

The CAP analysis itself is a good example of what’s now possible. Using geospatial data, researchers mapped:

• Miles of rivers and streams within monument boundaries
• Watershed extents upstream and downstream
• Populations that rely on those waters

AI can significantly expand that work:

• Satellite imagery + machine learning to track land-use changes (roads, well pads, clear cuts) around water sources in near real time
• Hydrological modeling with AI to forecast how proposed mining or drilling would alter runoff, sediment loads, and water quality
• Risk scoring tools that flag which protected areas are most critical for drinking water and most exposed to policy rollbacks

If you’re running sustainability, operations, or risk for a company, these tools can move you beyond generic “water stewardship” statements to specific, data-backed positions on which landscapes matter most to your business.

2. Planning resilient infrastructure

Green technology infrastructure — especially renewable energy projects, battery plants, and AI data centers — is increasingly built in the same Western regions covered by these monument debates.

The smarter move is to treat protected lands as part of your water risk model, not an afterthought. Practically, that means:

• Incorporating watershed dependencies into site selection and expansion plans
• Favoring sites in basins with strong upstream protections and clear governance
• Factoring potential policy shifts on public lands into long-term water cost modeling

AI can ingest weather, climate projections, policy signals, and hydrological data to rank regions by water stability risk. If two proposed data center locations look similar on power and connectivity, but one sits downstream of a heavily mined, politically volatile basin and the other below a well-protected monument system, that should influence your call.

3. Accountability and ESG alignment

Investors and regulators are getting less patient with vague ESG promises. Water is one of the easiest places to bring hard metrics and clear positions:

• Map your supply chain and facilities against monument-linked watersheds.
• Quantify how many customers, employees, or suppliers depend on those systems.
• State where your company stands on monument protection and related public land policy.

You don’t need to become an activist organization. But if your brand leans on green technology, it makes sense to:

• Support science-based land protection around critical watersheds
• Engage in policy comment periods using data from AI-driven risk analysis
• Prioritize water-efficient technologies and circular water systems at facilities in vulnerable basins

That’s not just ethics. It’s basic risk management.

What Businesses and Leaders Can Do Right Now

If you’re responsible for sustainability, operations, or strategy, national monument policy may feel far from your day job. It isn’t. Here’s how to connect it to your actual decisions.

1. Map your water footprint

Use internal data and public hydrology datasets to answer three questions:

1. Which of your facilities or key suppliers sit in Colorado River Basin states or other drought-prone regions?
2. Which of those are downstream of national monuments or other protected lands?
3. How much operational or revenue risk would you face if water costs increased or quality declined in those locations?

This is where AI-assisted geospatial tools shine — they can compress weeks of manual research into a few hours.

2. Integrate watershed protection into procurement and siting

Treat watershed resilience as a hard criterion, not a soft bonus, when you:

• Choose sites for new facilities
• Sign long-term supply contracts
• Evaluate renewable energy projects or storage facilities

You’re already thinking about power, labor, logistics, and tax incentives. Add upstream land protection status to that list.

3. Align your climate and water advocacy

Most climate-forward companies are already engaging on:

• Clean energy standards
• Transmission buildout
• EV and storage incentives

Fold watershed and monument protection into the same advocacy portfolio. It’s consistent with decarbonization and absolutely central to long-term resilience.

Why National Monuments Belong in Every Green Tech Strategy

The story buried in this monument fight is simple: land protection is water protection, and water protection is business protection.

For at least 13 million Americans — and for a rapidly growing share of the green economy — national monuments function as quiet backbone infrastructure. They stabilize rivers that feed cities, cool power plants, support hydropower, and keep costs down for utilities and industry.

As AI, clean energy, and data infrastructure expand across the West, the companies building that future can’t afford to treat these landscapes as someone else’s issue. The tools we use to optimize supply chains and train large models can also show, with uncomfortable clarity, where we’re drinking from watersheds that are only one policy change away from heavy extraction.

If your strategy depends on reliable, affordable water over the next 10–30 years, you’re already in the monument conversation — whether you’ve said so out loud or not.

The smarter move is to acknowledge that dependency, use the best available data and AI tools to understand it, and then act in ways that keep both your business and the watersheds you rely on resilient for the long haul.